Grapes of Wrath

In the grapes of wrath by john Steinbeck he made the solid point that when society is in a crisis, times are easier when we all take the responsibility of helping each other out instead of every man for him self. Today we are all faced with crisis’s but it always better to work together. Such as when hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans if the country as a whole wouldn’t have gotten together to help, many wouldn’t have survived. Therefore john Steinbeck was successful in creating this point because he used pathos, logos, and ethos, well, throughout his writing. Pathos was a profoundly used rhetoric in this book. Steinbeck based his point on the emotions of the society. Many were loosing land, businesses, and their will, people started to do whatever they thought was best for them even if those things were conniving. An example of strong emotion in the book is when a car salesman is trying to sell a car while the crisis of money, food, and land shortages was still going on. The car salesman said “they’re lookers; don’t want to buy no cars. Take up your time. Don’t give a damn for your time.” “Salesman, neat deadly small intent eyes watching for weakness.” These two quotes show how the salesman couldn’t sell a car but he was preying on the weak to sell the cars looking out for his self instead of for him and his fellow man and therefore fails at selling the car. Ethos was definitely used in this book. He used both logos and pathos so this shows he’s trust worthy because logic reason and appeal to the emotions shows support of his point. He stuck to the point and never side tracked to another idea. He also never contradicted himself through out the book. Steinbeck showed trustworthiness by proving his point in the end of the book when they came together things worked out just like they do in other things today. Although in the beginning things seemed never to go right at all for the society in the grapes of wrath by working together they prevailed. They realized